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VIII. Variants and Dialects of the English Language

To this point we have been dealing with the vocabulary of the English language as if there were only one variety of this language. We shall now turn to the details in which the language of some English speakers differs from that of others, we shall see what varieties of the language in question there are and how they are interconnected.

Every language allows different kinds of variations: geographical or territorial, perhaps the most obvious, stylistic, the difference between the written and the spoken form of the standard national language and others. We shall be concerned here with the territorial variations, the others being the domain of stylistics.

For historical and economic reasons the English language has spread over vast territories. It is the national language of England proper, the USA, Australia, New Zealand and some provinces of Canada. It is the official language in Wales, Scotland, in Gibraltar and on the island of Malta. The English language was also at different times enforced as an official language on the peoples who fell under British rule or US domination in Asia, Africa and Central and South America. The population of these countries still spoke their mother tongue or had command of both languages. After World War II as a result of the national liberation movement throughout Asia and Africa many former colonies have gained independence and in some of them English as the state language has been or is being replaced by the national language of the people inhabiting these countries (by Hindi in India, Urdu in Pakistan, Burmanese in Burma, etc.). though by tradition it retains there the position of an important means of communication.

The role of the English language in these countries is often overrated, apart from other reasons, through not differentiating between the function of the language as a mother tongue and its function as a means of communication between the colonisers and the native population.

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Источник: R. S. Ginzburg S. S. Khidekel, G. Y. Knyazeva, A. A. Sankin. A COURSE IN MODERN ENGLISH LEXICOLOGY. 1979

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